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Deviled Crabs

A crab dish with crab meat, ham, celery, lettuce, breadcrumbs, mustard, lemon juice, and egg, baked in shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the crabs in salted water.

  2. Remove the meat from the shells with a little crab fat, being careful not to break the shells.

  3. Mix crab meat, one part boiled lean ham, and finely chopped celery and lettuce.

  4. Add a few bread crumbs, mustard, and lemon juice, then bind with one egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the mixture into the shells and bake.

  2. Serve with lemon.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Provide the main meat that forms the body of the filling.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape in the shells.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the filling hold together rather than run.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour that complements the crab.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab and balances the flavour.

The step that matters

Remove the meat from the shells gently. Shells that crack or break can't be refilled neatly and let filling leak out during baking. Picking the meat with a little crab fat helps it come away cleanly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, ham, celery, lettuce, bread, mustard, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, ham, celery, lettuce, bread, mustard, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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